Google Earth is so awesome. I tried my hand on Google Earth about 2 months back and it was amazing and so real. You can actually see the live street view in real time. But If you want to see through a live street camera, you can try earthcam.com.

Really it's a great way for us to share shooting locations, especially for landscape photographers.

I was at a talk by Alex Buono, and he demoed how he scouted out an urban time lapse shoot using the 3D terrain/flythrough, 3D buildings, and time-of-day sun position features in Google Earth to figure out which rooftop he wanted to get permission to film on. Then he showed the final time lapse video and the Google Earth animation side by side, and they were virtually identical: the sun arced across the sky and the buildings cast shadows exactly as Google Earth said.

The whole room was like "whoaa...virtual light scouting in a free program"

I was at a talk by Alex Buono, and he demoed how he scouted out an urban time lapse shoot using the 3D terrain/flythrough, 3D buildings, and time-of-day sun position features in Google Earth to figure out which rooftop he wanted to get permission to film on. Then he showed the final time lapse video and the Google Earth animation side by side, and they were virtually identical: the sun arced across the sky and the buildings cast shadows exactly as Google Earth said.

The whole room was like "whoaa...virtual light scouting in a free program"